Examination of Witnesses (Questions 839
- 859)
MONDAY 1 DECEMBER 2003
MISS HILDA
CLARKE, REVEREND
JEREMY HURST
AND MS
JULIA SHEPARD
Q839 Chairman: Can I thank Hilda
Clarke, the Headteacher of Langley Grammar School, Slough, Reverend
Jeremy Hurst, Chair of the Slough School Organisation Committee
and the School Admissions Forum and Julia Shepard, Headteacher,
Beechwood School in Slough. Thank you very much for helping us
with our informal session. People should never agree to an informal
session because it makes it more difficult in the formal session.
We have been primed. We have had the informal session and I know
that all three of you held back a bit to let other people speak
who were not going to get a chance to speak later, is there anything
you want to reflect on that were shared round this chamber earlier
on?
Revd Hurst: I think if you were
to ask the questions now, you have all done a lot of listening,
we do not know what is in your mind.
Ms Shepard: I think there are
one or two aspects of helpful practice that we could discuss round
some of the issues, certainly round young people who are coming
into the town after the September move that may be useful.
Miss Clarke: I think the only
issue I would like to raise is to put some numbers round how many
pupils do apply to the grammar schools in the Slough area. I would
just like to make the point that people have to opt-in to do the
11-plus in Slough. You might have thought all pupils in Slough
primary schools do the 11-plus, far from it, it is only those
that opt-in. The only other point I would say is that you are
not listening to the parents' views, I do not think that has been
put across to you, you have not heard that. I think parents in
Slough cope with very, very complex systems indeed. I know Jeremy
is very active in our community so he will know how complicated
the parents' views of this are. I think we have quite sophisticated
parents in Slough because they have to manage and understand a
complex admission system, not just post 11 but also for primary
age as well.
Q840 Chairman: We had hoped to meet
some parents today but it has not worked out. Certainly I hope
if we can make the case through our back-up team in the local
press we would very much like to receive any submissions from
parents on the system in Slough. That is a very good point. Can
I push you a little on the percentage of students who do opt into
the 11-plus process?
Miss Clarke: The figures I have
are purely for the number of applications we have and the rough
percentage is what we call out of the Slough post-code area. The
last two years, so this current year and the previous year, the
11-plus went back into the Slough primary schools. They were not
doing it on the same day as people outside the Slough community
do it. For the 2003 entry, September 2003, we had approximately
2,300 candidates sit for the four grammar schools, that is for
530 places roughly, out of that 2,300 about 800 to 900 are not
Slough people. That number does vary a lot, I will say that. In
the entry 2001 we had roughly 1,800 sitting the test, for entry
in 2002, 2,000 and for entry in 2003, 3,200 applicants, so the
numbers have been steadily rising. I do know, my school is a prime
example of that, I have had a massive increase in the number applying
from outside Slough. My school is the most affected of the four
grammar schools because I am out on the eastern edge so I am at
the edge nearest to Greater London so more people see me as attractive
rather than the schools that are further in to Slough, and obviously
the Catholic element draws from everywhere. That is the four grammar
schools and those are some numbers sitting the 11-plus.
Q841 Chairman: The question that
I was hoping to pursue was this one about the fairness of the
system, do you think that the system of admissions here in Slough
is fair? If it is not entirely fair would you change it in any
way?
Miss Clarke: The system is very
complicated because there is an admissions process at 11 to the
Slough non-selective schools and there is a system of admission
to grammar schools. If you look at the forms the forms are quite
straightforward, so I think all of the admissions authorities
try and make it as clear as possible. As you saw currently those
two systems operate side by side, so you can apply to the grammar
schools and you can also still get your preference for a non-selective
school as well. The systems are clear, they run parallel, they
do not disadvantage one way or another. If anything people get
two bites of the cherry, you can apply to the grammar school system
and still get your first preference, the new common admissions
form is meant to amend that. Added to that people are looking
at different admission systems in Windsor, Maidenhead, Buckinghamshire,
Hounslow and Hillingdon and suddenly then it makes it very complicated
and in that sense it can become unfair because you have to work
very hard to understand all of those systems. Certainly what we
find is when we are talking to a massive number of parents at
open evenings and open mornings is that people struggle to understand
how they fit into those admissions systems. If they want to they
can choose a different system to opt in to, yes they can, but
understanding it is complicated.
Q842 Chairman: Apart from being complicated
you are an attractive school, you sit in Slough, even if you sit
on one end of Slough, and you told me informally earlier that
you take people on merit in terms of how they score in the entrance
test, hypothetically all of your pupils could come from outside
Slough, could they not?
Miss Clarke: Yes, because our
admissions policy, as with the other two foundation schools, is
purely on ability, so purely performance in the test. Yes, they
could come from outside Slough, we do not control it, and we do
not make decisions based on where they come from.
Q843 Jonathan Shaw: You do not make
any decision based on where they come from, do you make any decisions
based on their circumstances, for example is the first priority
of your own admissions authority, children in public care, would
they get priority?
Miss Clarke: No. It is purely
on performance in the test. When we make the selection we look
down the list, all it is is numbers, there is no identifying character
to the numbers on the page. When we make the offer I do not know
gender, where they come from, background or anything whatsoever,
it is purely on performance in the test.
Q844 Jonathan Shaw: Thank you. Presumably
there are a number of pupils who have a similar score then you
have to look at them. What I am trying to understand from you
is that would there be circumstances that a child in public care
would get any form of preference for an over-prescribed place
at your school in any circumstances?
Miss Clarke: Not under the current
system that we have. We do not cut the numbers, if it is 30 on
the numbers all 30 get offered a place. The over-subscription
in school admissions is also a problem, once you have taken ability
into consideration it is then siblings and proximity to the school.
Q845 Jonathan Shaw: Again you put
that above children in public care despite the Adjudicator setting
that out in the current practice?
Miss Clarke: Having been taken
to the Adjudicator the Adjudicator did not make that point to
us. We were taken to the Adjudicator two years ago, the three
foundation grammar schools, and the Adjudicator did not criticise
us for that on our admissions policy. Special circumstances are
given to children with special education needs. They are given
different treatment for doing a test and we follow the principles
on that. We do not have, as Slough has, looked-after children
as a priority, no.
Q846 Jonathan Shaw: If I can put
to you that the Adjudicator came to our Select Committee and I
asked him this question, "Are you saying loudly and clearly
to all admission authorities in England that children in public
care should be number one?" You know the reasons why, should
your school, should your admissions authority, one, ignore that
and, two, wait to be told that and as a defence say, "we
were not told so therefore it does not matter".
Miss Clarke: I understand the
point that you are making there very strongly. What I would like
to say is that we do have a few children in our school who are
looked-after children. I am not trying to be awkward or do it
by the letter of the law but we have been taken by the Adjudicator
to the High Court on judicial review and I have to say that we
have never been told that that is the basis of the criteria. What
we do say, and I would like to state it this way, is that because
admission is purely by ability what we do not allow ourselves
to be judged by, is people's circumstances or where they live.
I am sure that the governors of the school would be happy to look
at a looked-after child category but for that we have to go out,
as demanded of us, to change our admissions policy and do that.
If the Government said that really is something that is defective
then I am sure we will work at that. Having gone through all of
those people and adjudication we have never been picked up on
that. We do have children in our school who are in the looked-after
category.
Q847 Jonathan Shaw: Given the circumstances
that have been explained by Julia Shepard's school and presumably
you have a number of children who are looked-after, et cetera,
do you have anything to say about that set of circumstances? Is
it too difficult? Do you think that is right? The point is that
unless there is an initial objection about children in care, about
some parent or the local authority, in this case Slough, saying
you should put it as number one then it will not happen, a parent
has to raise it in order for the adjudication process to take
place, what do you think about this?
Revd Hurst: To reply to that,
each school operates its admission policies according to status.
The community schools in Slough operate the policy that is laid
down to them by the authority, which is as you have said. I have
not heard of it being an issue in those schools. One of the complexities
of this situation, and you have heard such a lot about the complexities
already, is that we are dealing with foundation schools. Three
of the grammar schools are foundation and one is a voluntary agent
school and they set their own admissions criteria. When the Schools
Admission Forum meets in this room it is aware of the great limitation
on its powers because it can deal with the schools which come
under the authority's jurisdiction, it cannot deal with foundation
schools, this is part of Government policy.
Q848 Jonathan Shaw: I am grateful
for that. Do you have a view on that? You are operating within
a system, you have explained to us there are constraints around
it, we want to put a report together that perhaps looks at Government
policy, the rights and the wrongs of it, Jeremy, tell us what
works and what does not work and the point about children in public
care, is that okay not to be at the top of the list?
Revd Hurst: I have answered about
children in public care, if they are listed in the admissions
criteria that is that.
Q849 Jonathan Shaw: Do you think
a school should not have it at the top of its list? Do you think
a school that has its own admissions authority should have children
in care as number one? Is that too difficult?
Revd Hurst: My own personal opinion
is, yes, it should be. I am certainly clear about that. As far
as the community schools in Slough are concerned the admissions
criteria are the ones that are set out in front of you. A foundation
school sets it own admissions criteria.
Q850 Jonathan Shaw: You are saying
there are constraints within the system, what constraints would
you like to see done away with?
Revd Hurst: I have been involved
in education for a long time, in the days when there was an education
committee an education committee had jurisdiction over the schools
in that area and as a result of government policy successively
over the last 15 years many of those have been removed from the
Local Education Authority and it is then not a question of sitting
in a council chamber and making decisions which then affects all
schools, it is a complex process of negotiation between bodies
with limited powers, consulting with another body, having the
opportunity to do this and not do that. This is true of school
organisation committees such as the Schools Admission Forum, where
you get contradictions built into Government policy. The question
of sixth forms came up earlier in the meeting and to my mind a
school which has a sixth form is in a privileged position compared
to a school that has not. Sister Mary made that point very, very
forcibly. What is to be the case for schools in Slough when only
the grammar schools have fully fledged two year sixth forms? If
you wished to introduce them the power to do that has been taken
away from the School Organisation Committee and given to the Learning
and Skills Council. That kind of internal contradiction is something
that we bump into all of the time.
Q851 Jonathan Shaw: Julia Shepard,
do you have any comment?
Ms Shepard: I would say that the
working practice in admissions in Slough is good. The Slough Admissions
Team is very powerful. I think we would all agree that it is challenging
to all of us in the different sectors. We also have a team for
looked-after children in the authority who are ambassadors for
those young people. What it leads me to is—and this is a
personal view—I feel that if you have parents or guardians
who are prepared to spend time and energy in getting to grips
with an admissions system you are more advantaged and more likely
to arrive at a destination that you hope for than if you have
parents who have not got the time, the wherewithal or the inclination
to do that. I make that as a general point. I would also follow
on and say for me context is huge, the context of a young person.
I think we do have to look at the context of the youngster and
what has helped them in the past, what has not helped them and
help them into the best position for them. We know that youngsters
come through at different levels of advantage and disadvantage,
we know that. There are some very sophisticated type of tools
and indicators that show us that, YELLIS is one that we use. There
are many tools in the market and they are of great use taking
into account a whole range of factors, how likely they are to
achieve, etc. It saddens me in a way that the admissions procedure
mitigates against that level of sophisticated information that
we have, and I guess that it is just not fair if you are a child
that happens to sit in one position.
Q852 Mr Chaytor: Could I ask each
of our witnesses, do you think parental choice should be the cornerstone
of the schools admissions system?
Revd Hurst: If you answer yes
then you live with the consequence of that, that parental
choice is obviously what parents want, but they simply cannot
have it in a free system, and the obvious result of that is if
all parents choose the same school. People have often made the
comparison that you cannot treat schools like supermarkets, do
I go to this one, do I go to that one. If you have a system of
parental choice and also a system which operates across LEA boundaries,
which is the present case, you have to live with the consequences
of that. You then have schools which are over-subscribed and have
you heard earlier about the huge numbers of children in this authority
who are the subject of appeals. You also live with the consequences
of so many moving out and so many moving in, the length of the
school day, there are all sorts of consequences of parental choice.
The other side of the scale from the over-subscribed school is
the under-subscribed school. If I may just continue, all of the
schools that were talked about this afternoon were over-subscribed,
the four grammar schools plus Westgate and Wexham. I am a governor
of a school that has always been under-subscribed, it is in Langley.
There are two schools Langley Grammar School and what used to
be Langley Secondary Modern School and the preference is for the
grammar school. There is a deep-rooted expectation there that
if your children do not get into the grammar school you then move
them out of the area. That is in the minds of parents even though
that door was closed. The school has been running under-capacity
for years and because of the entrenched attitude the school is
doubly disadvantaged, firstly by selection and secondly by this
parental choice. As a result the school is being under-subscribed.
There are vacancies. If there are parents who want to get their
children into a school when they have moved into the area and
find their local school is full they will have to travel with
the child to an under-subscribed school. That in itself does not
sound too bad but there are numerous groups of asylum seekers
and refugees and this school took 80 casual admissions during
the course of the year, some of whom spoke not a word of English
and as a result of this their performance in the measurable tests
is low and the school is then seen as a low achieving school.
Heroic efforts are made to get these recently arrived immigrant
children to a level where they speak English and are able to participate
in the education process and the school is marked down as a result
of their presence there. I could go on. These are all consequences
of parental choice.
Q853 Mr Chaytor: You described the
characteristics of the system as it applies in Slough now as a
system that is uniformly normally based on parental choice, do
all parents have a choice?
Revd Hurst: You heard Councillor
Mansell not wishing to use the words parental choice but parental
preference. Where parents do have a choice in many cases it is
not met. If I may pick up a point, working as a parish priest
in the area which is served by Herschel Grammar[5]
I am aware of very, very widespread parental anxiety and also
anxiety amongst children who really do not know where they are
going to be next year. The selective system will separate families
and will also separate friendships. Some are exploring the possibility
then of getting out of the Slough system in order to avoid what
are seen as secondary modern schools and they go to Maidenhead,
they look outside the area. It is very disturbing for children
not knowing where they will be in a year's time.
Q854 Mr Chaytor: Julia, on parental
choice?
Ms Shepard: I cannot see a point
where we are going to step back from parental preference or parental
choice.
Q855 Mr Chaytor: What I am trying
to tease out is what do you think is the difference between parental
choice and parental preference? Which does apply in Slough? How
many people does it apply to? If there are problems with it what
should the alternatives be?
Ms Shepard: I suppose some people
have a great deal of choice, some people have diminished choice
and a few people have very little choice. I do not think that
it is necessarily different here to other authorities across the
country. As you know we network with colleagues from all over
the place and that is the kind of view I think is broadly held
in education circles. I think it is going to be difficult to come
back from parent preference. I use the word "preference"
carefully because I think as a society we have now got used to
being able to express our preferences and articulate those and
set about having some of those preferences met or at least being
able to explore them. Where I think we are at grievous fault in
the system is how we measure the success of schools. I think the
kind of information that the Government, I have to say, allows
to be presented in the public arena about schools being deeply
flawed does not help. I do not think it is sophisticated enough,
I think it is far too crude. It has promoted this scrabble for
choice based on erroneous information right across the country.
Some of the bases on which parents and students choose their schools
are based on myth and not on fact. I know for our school that
the feedback from parents in the local community has been the
transformation over the last two years. I know if I invite people
to the school and they come over the threshold they are taken
with the environment, the ethos, the politeness of the students
and some of the work they are doing. Previously their judgments
would have been based on skewed information. Perhaps it is worth
repeating this afternoon the Audit Commission's finding that if
you look at the contextual information and beyond that, the value-added
information, some of the schools that are cited as the bottom
10% on performance if you apply enough measures to them become
part of the top per cent of performing schools in the country.
Until we move to a more sophisticated way of measuring success
and education in society we are going to operate within a very
flawed system.
Miss Clarke: Julia's evidence
is very articulate on that. People can state their preference
and parents state their preference whatever the systems are but
the reality of choice is not there because you cannot deliver
the flexibility of what parents want. Julia has amply pointed
out the basis on which parents are making judgments, sometimes
it is on myth and sometimes it is on misinformation. One of the
first things I did when I arrived in Slough was actually to go
to a meeting held in the local community that Jeremy held in order
to talk face to face with people in the community about what they
thought we were doing about taking children into school and what
the reality of that was. There is parent preference, we have that,
but the reality of choice is not there. It is different in each
area. Having worked in a big county like Cheshire we were all
comprehensives and there was a pecking order and people moved.
So what you got was people buying houses next to what they thought
were the most successful comprehensive schools, they were big
schools and you did have under-capacity there and I saw the knock-on
effect of that. I think it is almost an impossible thing to do
to have satisfied choice, you can give preference but I do not
think you can satisfy choice. I would like to see a system that
can do that.
Q856 Mr Chaytor: Do you feel that
choice ought to be a basic principle even though accepting in
many parts of the country we do not have choice for everyone and
it is difficult to reconcile it with the availability of places
in particular schools, given the nature of geography, and so on?
Are you convinced that offering all parents the choice of their
school ought to be the basis of the system?
Miss Clarke: I think it is what
we should strive for because if we go for prescription I think
there are a lot of problems in that as well. I think we have to
work for that, we have to work very hard and it does make people
work hard. If anything it has to make us work closely together
and challenge some of the points that Julia has put forward about
how we see people's perceptions.
Q857 Mr Chaytor: If choice were the
basis of a system how do we reconcile that with ability in terms
of the criteria for selection? In Slough the figures we have been
given for the year 2000 are that 87% of children in Slough did
not go to selective schools, given they are the best resourced
schools and parents would prefer their children to go to the best
resourced schools how do you reconcile choice and ability as admissions?
Miss Clarke: You are assuming
that 87% apply to go to grammar schools, I would say it is way
below that. They exercise is a choice by not sitting the test.
If you have a selective system it does not mean a lot of people
vote with their feet, they make tactical choices about where their
children should go. The second point is that, yes, if you have
selection ability then in effect you are cutting the cake of choice
in a more complex way. Here in Slough we have other issues facing
schools, we have a Sikh secondary school and that cuts across
the cake, gender education cuts across the cake, any local authority
near to you cuts across the cake and that is why it becomes very,
very difficult to be able to materialise choice and allow people
to actually have 100% effectiveness or even 50% effectiveness
of their choice, that is where it makes it is even more difficult
to do. If you put in a variable then choice is diminished by it.
Q858 Mr Chaytor: Do you think it
is possible to accurately assess general intellectual ability
at the age of 11?
Ms Shepard: That is something
that I spent a bit of time working on and I find it very odd that
much of our work in education now is predicated on the theories
of multiple intelligence and different ways in which the brain
develops and operates. I find it odd that we do measure youngsters
at 11 when we have a whole breadth of information at our disposal.
I find it a very strange system with a very narrow measuring band.
Relating it back to the kind of choice and preference we have,
I feel very strongly that we should be developing centres of excellence
of all sorts, sporting, artistic, cultural, creative, mathematically,
linguistic in our community schools and if somebody has a very
strong reason that their preference is to move out of that community
that is where the choice comes in that we should be looking at.
I find it is sad that for some youngsters they feel that their
measure of ability has been taken at 11. Some youngsters do not
take the 11-plus, so it comes back to equality of opportunity,
is that because some parents do not know, do not want to risk
it, to me there are a whole range of factors that make it a very
unequal kind of system.
Revd Hurst: Just returning to
the question of parental choice, I think this is a phrase you
should not use. I think all politicians should drop the phrase
because it is misleading, arouses false expectations and the case
against it has been made by all of us here, particularly by Hilda.
I think we need to find an alternative means. Can you measure
the intelligence of a child at the age of 11? The answer is no,
it cannot be done to my satisfaction. The point was clearly behind
the 1960s driving force behind the move to comprehensive education.
Miss Clarke: We measure children's
ability now at 7, 11, 13, 15, 16 and 17, there is almost a compulsive
nature about it. We do it in one form of a test at 11 and we adopt
the NFER non-verbal, verbal reasoning maths test that is one way
of doing it. In fact we are actually judging children much earlier
than that, we judge them at seven and we are saying that you are
at that level at a certain time and we say that you are not at
as good a level as somebody else. The children that we now find
coming to sit our 11-plus are not as nervous, they are used to
test situations and they have experienced that through doing tests,
they go through a regime that tests them as early as seven years
old. We use that 11-plus test as a snapshot of a child's ability
at that point. I think everybody would say that if you take that
snapshot at 12 or 13 that will change. That is the tool that we
are using, we are using the NVR and VR testing end and will be
a maths paper, it is based on the curriculum, therefore it is
based on the teaching value. We support that as a way of taking
a snapshot at that particular time of that child but it is only
one measure and other measures are used round the country. There
is a selection that is used with aptitude tests as well, they
are taken as a snapshot. It is being done in many other ways,
perhaps the oldest way of doing it is in a way that is more traditional
and geared towards what they have been taught in terms of curriculum.
Yes, I support the system, I think it does work as a snapshot
at that particular time.
Q859 Mr Chaytor: Accepting it is
a snapshot does it follow that really determines the level of
resource that is invested in a child for the whole of their secondary
education, that snapshot puts them above 11, or whatever the mark
is, and they get a higher level of resource invested in their
education, is that measurable?
Miss Clarke: You are assuming
that grammar schools have higher levels of resource, and I do
not think that is true anymore. If you are talking about sheer
income coming into the school that is via pupil numbers. In many
case a lot of the grants that the Government have are not applicable
to schools like mine, we are too high-performing or there are
not behavioural issues or attendance issues. So you are making
the assumption that at 11 if you get to grammar school the resource
and the quality is better, and I argue strongly against that.
I think the quality and the resource you get in schools however
they move at 11 is based upon the school itself and the resources
that go into it. You are assuming that all grammar schools are
necessarily the best schools and there can be a question mark
against that. I am sure that the resource element that goes into
Julia's school is a very rich quality of teaching and things like
that, what you are exposing them to should not be different, whether
it is a grammar school or anything else, the quality of the resource
should be the same. I would argue that that is what I think this
Government has tried to do, target resources to where there is
specific need, and that has been another layer of that. I question
the assumption of the question that you make there.
Ms Shepard: If I may just make
another comment about choice, I do feel that some young people
in the town have an element of choice taken away from them. We
are very lucky in Slough in that we have good and effective schools
in all sectors. In our primary schools are student population
works effectively, well and productively and they are achieving
in their primary schools, in their local communities, in mixed
schools and mixed groups. I do feel that for some of our young
people the choice to continue learning in a way that is rich and
fulfilling for them is taken away from them. We are fudging the
issue on choice in many different ways. For some of the youngsters
I have met choice has been taken away from them and they are no
longer operating with cohorts and the breadth of population they
were operating with before.
5 Note by Witness: The area is served by Langley
Grammar, not Herschel Grammar. Back
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